Heaven of Drums

Heaven of Drums, a historical novel by Argentine lawyer Ana Gloria Moya, won the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize for Spanish-language women writers in 2002. Part of the prize is the translation of the winning novel into English, which led to the Lannan Foundation supporting this translation for publication in 2007. The novel charts the struggle for Argentine independence at the start of the nineteenth century through the lives of Gregorio Rivas, half-Indian son of a rural landowner, and Maria Kumba, a mulatto priestess of her ancestral religion.

I really wanted to like this novel, but for me it fell flat on almost every level. I fear that perhaps the translation didn't help - the language was often clunky and hard to read, and show more occasionally descended into grotesque floridity. However, I don't think the translation is entirely at fault. I found the characters were caricatures rather than people, and there was an awful lot of telling, rather than showing. I did pick up some idea of what happened historically and some notion of current tensions in modern-day Argentina, though, and I did enjoy some of the African cultural background.

For the most part though, unfortunately I found the book's flaws distracted far too much from any sense of narrative for this novel to really engage my mind or emotions. show less